Archive for the ‘anticybersquatting’ Category
After paying off cybersquatters, Kohler says it got burned.
Plumbing fixtures giant Kohler has filed an anticybersquatting lawsuit against a company that it had already paid to stop registering its trademarks as domain names.
The federal district suit was filed against DomainJet, Inc, Jack Sun, and one or more of the company’s employees.
According to Kohler, it approached the defendants after it noticed they registered Kohlerco.in. The defendants demanded $1,000 to transfer the domain name. Kohler offered $500 for the domain if the defendants would not register any Kohler trademarks in the future.
The defendants apparently agreed and Kohler paid the money.
But shortly thereafter the defendants allegedly registered four more infringing domain names and demanded $1,000 to transfer the new domain names.
That’s what prompted Kohler to file the suit. Honestly, I can’t blame them.
Now Kohler is asking for $100,000 per infringing domain name, or $500,000 total.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
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Company says former franchisee created site to defame it.
Tutoring and SAT test prep franchisor Sylvan Learning has sued the domain name SylvanFranchiseIssues.com for violating the anti-cybersquatting act.
The company alleges (pdf) the site was set up by a former franchisee in which it is involved in litigation.
Finding the alleged owner of the site was no small feat. The suit details Sylvan Learning’s attempts to track down the owner, starting with an inquiry to eNom’s whois privacy service. That lead the company to an address in London. A contact there said he used to offer a service where people could use his address when registering domain names. The trail then moved to India and then to a former franchisee in Ohio.
The site’s owner allegedly did more that just create the site to peeve Sylvan. He allegedly forwarded web traffic to the site from Sylvan’s corporate offices to competitor Huntington Learning Centers. He also allegedly bought Google Adwords for his site when someone searched for “Sylvan Franchises”.
Once tracked down, the site’s owner claimed that Sylvan had violated SylvanFranchiseIssues.com’s (SFI) terms of services by visiting the site:
the Terms of Use “prohibit employees, related parties or independent contractors of Sylvan Learning Inc., or any of its affiliates or related parties from accessing the SFI website.”
Clever.
If you visit the domain name right now it gives an error that the site is currently in maintenance mode.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
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Earlier this year a workers compensation insurance company that has a trademark for 1stQuote lost a UDRP for the domain name FirstQuote.com. On the balance, the panel found that the domain name owner registered it due to the generic nature of the domain name.
Now the complainant is taking the matter to the courts, filing an in rem case (pdf) against the domain name FirstQuote.com.
Interestingly, the UDRP was filed by Aspen Holdings, Inc, while the lawsuit was filed by MARKEL ASPEN, INC. d/b/a FIRSTCOMP INSURANCE.
The plaintiff lays out a similar case to what was argued in the UDRP. Except that it omits the fact that it lost an arbitration matter for the domain name.
Clearly the registrant of the domain name FirstQuote.com is reachable given that he responded to the UDRP. It seems that filing this in rem action against the domain name could be a way to slip a lawsuit through and get control of the domain name. It also avoids jurisdiction issues with the registrant being in Hong Kong.
The whois record was in a whois privacy setting when the case was filed, which means the domain name owner might not receive notice of the dispute. (It had a public whois record for a while after the UDRP, and is public again.)
It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
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Shunned by UDRP, former domain owner takes his case to court.
After losing a UDRP case for the domain name ChicagoRestaurant.com, Chicago Restaurant & Entertainment Guide, Inc., has filed an in rem lawsuit against the domain name alleging cybersquatting.
Before you yell “that’s a generic!”, you should know that this domain name was allegedly stolen. The plaintiff had registered the domain and kept the whois email in the name of a technology service provider. That service provider went out of business and let its domain name expire. Then it appears someone registered the domain of the service provider, set up an email address that was the same as listed in whois, and transferred the domain name.
The lawsuit is available here (pdf). (Note to the plaintiff’s lawyers: Go Daddy isn’t the registry for .com as noted in the suit.)
Until it’s resolved, you’ll find the owner at DiningChicago.com.
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
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Yahoo now has Flicker.com for Flickr.com web site.
As Michael Berkens pointed out today, Yahoo now owns the domain name Flicker.com.
But this wasn’t your typical domain name sale. It was actually the culmination of year long anti-cybersquatting lawsuit brought against the Flicker.com owner AshantiPLC, which is owned in part by domain investor Sahar Sarid.
Yahoo’s lawsuit against the Ashanti was filed in July 2009. Yahoo alleged that the defendants purchased the domain name for $55,000 on eBay in July 2006. The suit chronicles what the defendants did with the name after they bought it, including showing traffic stats and citing numerous rejected offers. (They even turned down a $700,000 offer.) It also states that the defendants placed ads to camera companies on the domain name. Yahoo alleged that the defendants responded to twitter inquiries about Flicker.com being down.
You can read Yahoo’s original lawsuit here, and the defendant’s response here.
The parties entered mediation and settled the case, with Yahoo dismissing it last week. Details of the settlement were not disclosed.
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
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